August 19, 2025 • 15 mins
Fresh off the back of his meeting with Putin in Alaska, US President Donald Trump has held talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.
While details of those talks are still trickling out, this time things seem to have gone well.
Trump has promised Ukraine security, and is now talking about a peace deal – though not a ceasefire.
Today, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, David Szakonyi, on Trump's plan to profit from providing protection and whether we might see an end to the Russia Ukraine war.
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Guest: Associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, David Szakonyi
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven AM.
Fresh off the back of his meeting with Putin in Alaska,
US President Donald Trump has held talks with ukraine'st Lord Miszelenski.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
While details of those.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Talks are still trickling out, this time things seem to
have gone well. Trump has promised Ukraine's security and is
now talking about a peace deal, though not a ceasefire.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Today Associate professor of political.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Science and International Affairs at George Washington University David Sikoni
on Trump's plan to profit from providing protection and whether
we might see an end to the Russia Ukraine War.
It's Wednesday, August twenty David. The last time we spoke,
(00:56):
Donald Trump and Lord Miszelensky had just had that desire
fosterous meeting in the Oval Office. Zelensky has now been
back for another one.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
How did it go?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I would open by saying Zelensky clearly took a couple
of important lessons away from that February encounter in the
Oval Office.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Almost, President, you look fabulous in that suit, I said, Yeah,
Look you look good, I said the same thing.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah. First she wore a suit military inspired in all
black but still a suit, and not only got a
thumbs up from Trump, but Selensky even got a chance
to banter with the Fox News journalists, who regretibly tried
to call him out on it back in February in
the same suit. I changed. Second, he didn't come alone,
(01:43):
which really changed the dynamic. He and Trump met for
an hour one on one, but they're joined by the
French President, German Chancellor, NATO Secretary General, Finnish president, a
whole host of characters that I think put Trump in
a very different position where he wasn't able to die dominate.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Thank you too much. I think that we had a
very good conversation with President, very good and it really
was the best one or so maybe the best one
will be in the future.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So Lensky also made a point of expressing gratitude, supposedly
told Trump thank you ten times during the meeting, which
again Trump really likes to hear. Now, in terms of outcomes,
we don't know much about what actually happened. Trump supposed
lead left for a forty minute phone call with Putin
in the middle of negotiations. Has said that the US
(02:31):
is going to provide potentially troops on the ground and
full security. However, you know, water has already been poured
on some of these hopes from the Russian side, and
I think there's a bit of kind of maybe misunderstanding
about what we should expect next between Ukraine and Russia,
especially in the US.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
In the middle Okay, and central to the negotiations that
are happening at the moment is this idea of land swapping.
So that's something that Trump signaled in the lead up
the talks that he had with Putin.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So tell me.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
About the Ukrainian territory that Russia currently occupies and what
we know about what Putin would like to see happen.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Sure, Russia currently occupies about twenty percent of Ukraine proper,
and that includes Crimea and roughly two thirds of four
eastern and southern oblasts Danietskukan, Zaparija, and Hrson, collectively known
as say the don Bus. Now, Putin not only wants
to cement that area of control and annexation that Russia
(03:32):
has claimed, but he's demanding full sovereignty almost as a
precondition for a ceasefire over the remaining twenty five percent
of danetsk Olblust. Now, this is area that Russia is
claiming but has not yet captured and is still in
ukraine hands, and Putin wants it transferred basically as soon
as possible, as a condition for stopping the fighting on
(03:53):
the ground.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Okay, and just in terms of that region, how important
is it to Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well, the part of the Dambast that Putin is targeting
is critical to protecting the rest of Ukraine. It's highly fortified,
it's very strategic. Conceding it would severely weaken Ukraine's defensive
posture and endanger the remaining front line. I think it's
foolish to think that Putin would want this specific territory
and then stop there. That kind of acquisition would give
(04:23):
him a lot of momentum and advantages to keep pushing
westward towards Kiev and potentially the rest of the country.
And I think it's obvious why Zielenski is so reluctant
to concede any territories, because without a firm commitment from
the West as a security guarantee, giving Putin more land
could embolden and even kind of incentivize further military action
(04:47):
throughout the rest of Ukraine. And that's just unthinkable from
the Ukrainian current position.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Well, let's talk a little bit about a potential security guarantee.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
We've got Trump saying that there will be one.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
But we will give them very good protection, very good security,
and that's part of it. And the people that are
waiting for us, they are I think they're very like minded.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
They want to what do we know about what might
happen there?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
We know very little in great detail about what that
guarantee would look like. Trump is vacillated even over the
weekend about whether or not US troops or US forces
would be involved in some way in public and probably
behind closed doors. He's telling different people different things, and
I'm not sure that the Trump administration has really come
to affirm conclusion about what they're prepared to deploy within Ukraine.
(05:34):
It's clear what Ukraine and the European allies want, which
is something like an Article five NATO asks guarantee that
a Russian would ever restart military operations that the West
and NATO specifically would come to Ukraine's defense. But I
think it's very premature to know what the Trump administration
is willing to do in Ukraine, and it conflicts with
(05:57):
a lot of Trump's campaign rhetoric that we as America
wouldn't be sending more troops to Ukraine. So I think
he might be in a difficult domestic position that could
conflict with some of the things he's been telling other leaders.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
And so how do you think that Zelenski and his
allies in Europe will be feeling after this meeting at
the White House.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I think they're going to sleep well tonight. There was
this fear that Trump could tell them something very much
that they didn't want to hear and revert back to
positions that are much more favorable to Russia's side. But
with Trump going forward, you just never know. A meeting
ends on a high note, and within twenty four hours
or forty eight hours, you get a new truth social
(06:38):
or a new statement from a Trump ally that completely
contradicts what he told the last person in the room
on the last day. At the end of the day,
Trump's interests come first, oftentimes and mostly above the US interests,
and definitely above Ukraine's. So there's so much power invested
in this one person, and he is inherently unpredictable.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Coming up why Trump's meeting with Putin last week was
a huge victory for Russia.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are in talks tonight to
try to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
The leaders arrived in Anchorage in Alaska a couple of
hours ago, greeting each other on a red carpet laid
out on a US Air Force base David.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
On Friday, Trump met with Putin in Alaska. Tell me
a bit about that meeting and what came.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Out of that. And first, the fact that the meaning
happened at all was already a victory for the Russians.
They got a red carpet on US soil, the first
Putin visit in a decade, without having to concede anything
or make any type of gift to the US side,
and order to make that happen. Yeah, and this is
a moment. It was a real moment.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And there you see President of the United States first
deeplaning Air Force one. You know, let's just take a
moment and listen to this moment.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
I also think the Russians realized early on that Trump
was so focused on breaking the diplomatic impasse that he
was very much unprepared for how negotiations would actually go.
There was sort of no planning, no pre agreements, no
real specific items. The plan was going to be built
mid flight, and the Russians correctly calculated that they could
give away nothing and come out ahead. I think that's
(08:24):
what we saw. That Trump administration was very surprised about
how intransigent he was during those talks, and he felt
like he got this high profile summit that restored Russia's
status as a great superpower. To quote some of the
Moscow newspapers, Trump was embarrassed and very much wanted to
change the subject as soon as possible onto the next
(08:47):
meeting with Zelensky, rather than dwell in the fact that
he had raised expectations that there could be a ceasefire
coming out of it.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were
many many points that we agreed on most of them,
I would say a couple of big ones that we
haven't quite got there, but we've made some headway. So
there's no deal until there's a deal, I will.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
But Putin left smiling and returned home triumphantly demonstrating that
Russia had broken through the diplomatic isolation of the last
four years.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, and there was so much talk about a ceasefire
going into those talks, Obviously there was no agreement made
for one. Now instead the language is around having some
sort of peace steal.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
But can you have a peace deal without a ceasefire?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I think it's unlikely, but not impossible. I think most
successful peace talks begin with the ceasefire and allow the
sides to breathe a little bit. These two sides are
bit at each other's throats since February twenty twenty two.
There's a lot of enmity between them, and I just
can't imagine that you could hash out peace while Russian
(09:57):
bombers are killing Ukrainian civili And.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
When we talk about strong and durable agreements, I mean,
to what extent do you think Zelenski can or should
trust anything that is being said about a security deal
at this point or is it just too unpredictable to.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Really be able to put faith into.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I think he's still correctly reticent, but things have evolved
considerably since that February encounter in the Oval Office. The
US is still providing the level of military aid that
had committed to under Biden, of course, with some caveats,
major ones. Republicans in Congress have hardened their stance towards Russia.
(10:40):
Since then, Trump's rhetoric has changed a lot, at least
the public rhetoric about what Putin is guilty of in
Ukraine and how he needs to stop. So with time,
I wouldn't put it out of the realm possibility that
the US could offer real security guarantees to Ukraine. Of course,
I think this is critical exchange for material compensation, which
(11:02):
tragically seems to drive every US foreign policy move these days.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And what would material compensation be.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I mean, I think it's clear that Trump administration wants
to sell weapons to Ukraine and have somebody else pay
for them. There's this obsession with cutting budget spending and
anything that's not a core Conservative or MAGA priority, and
this falls into that category. And I think they think
there is some political value in saying that we help Ukraine,
(11:29):
but we were paid to do so. I don't understand
that logic. It really contravenes centuries of American foreign policy,
but that seems very important to the Trump administration. So
as long as somebody else is footing the bill, even
for the troops themselves, not just the weaponry, I think
it's very possible that Trump would come around to that
(11:50):
and try to champion this as a victory because the
US was not just giving away things for free, right.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And Trump has been calling on Europe to spend more,
to do more for a while.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So has that happened. Is europe playing a stronger role.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Absolutely, But the Europeans were already doing a ton before
Trump said that, So he was I think very unfair
in the way that he described what the US had
done compared to what the Europeans had done. But it
is good that this is galvanizing a European coalition that
is committed to the long term economic, political, and military
development of Ukraine, and that is allied and is also
(12:28):
seemingly adept at working with Trump and salvaging the Transatlantic Alliance,
which again, six months ago, Trump was still talking about
leaving NATO an abandoning military bases, and there were all
these rumors that the US was pulling out of Europe.
We're not having those same conversations today. Meetings are happening
like they get on Monday in the White House with
this huge contingent, and Trump seems way more open to
(12:52):
cooperation with the Europeans as long as he seeses them
pulling their weight more than they have over the last
couple of decades.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Okay, and we've now heard that the next step in
all of this will be a meeting between Zelenski and Putin.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So what do you think we're likely to see out
of that.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I'm not a betting man, but I still wouldn't bet
on this, or I'd bet against.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
It, against the meeting happening, against.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The meeting happening. Now there are still people who are
participants in this meeting coming out and saying that Trump
got off the phone and Putin said that it's going
to happen the next two weeks. I think there's two
big reasons to be skeptical, And the first is that
the Russians have already come out and said they discussed
the idea of a meeting, rather than gave any type
(13:38):
of commitment to it, so they're walking back whatever Putin said.
The second is that we've had these translation issues between
Trump emissaries and Putin specifically, and I think it's possible
that something just got lost or misunderstood in the phone call,
that Putin never promised a concrete date or setting. So
(14:03):
and I'll believe it when I see it, but yeah,
you can hold me to that prediction.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
David, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Thank you for having me. H.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Also in the news today, Defense Minister Richard Moles says
the government is open to sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine
if a peace steal is agreed to with Russia. The
comments come after Shadow Finance Minister James Patterson said the
Coalition was open to contributing to a peacekeeping effort, a
shifting stance from formal Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who was
dismissive of Australian involvement. And Foreign Minister Penny Wong has
(14:53):
called the decision from Israel to revoke the visas of
Australia's diplomatic representatives to the Palestinian authority unjustified, saying well
undermine AID efforts. Israel says the call was in response
to both Australia's decision to recognize the Palestinian state, as
well as to cancel the visa of far right Israeli politicians.
Sim To Rothman, who was due to start a speaking
(15:13):
tour in Australia, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM
and tomorrow on the show A conversation with journalist Joe
Aston about the record ninety million dollar fine Quantus has
to pay and why despite the public relations disaster, the
airline still came out on top.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
See you that
Hi, I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven AM.
Fresh off the back of his meeting with Putin in Alaska,
US President Donald Trump has held talks with ukraine'st Lord Miszelenski.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
While details of those.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Talks are still trickling out, this time things seem to
have gone well. Trump has promised Ukraine's security and is
now talking about a peace deal, though not a ceasefire.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Today Associate professor of political.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Science and International Affairs at George Washington University David Sikoni
on Trump's plan to profit from providing protection and whether
we might see an end to the Russia Ukraine War.
It's Wednesday, August twenty David. The last time we spoke,
(00:56):
Donald Trump and Lord Miszelensky had just had that desire
fosterous meeting in the Oval Office. Zelensky has now been
back for another one.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
How did it go?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I would open by saying Zelensky clearly took a couple
of important lessons away from that February encounter in the
Oval Office.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Almost, President, you look fabulous in that suit, I said, Yeah,
Look you look good, I said the same thing.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah. First she wore a suit military inspired in all
black but still a suit, and not only got a
thumbs up from Trump, but Selensky even got a chance
to banter with the Fox News journalists, who regretibly tried
to call him out on it back in February in
the same suit. I changed. Second, he didn't come alone,
(01:43):
which really changed the dynamic. He and Trump met for
an hour one on one, but they're joined by the
French President, German Chancellor, NATO Secretary General, Finnish president, a
whole host of characters that I think put Trump in
a very different position where he wasn't able to die dominate.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Thank you too much. I think that we had a
very good conversation with President, very good and it really
was the best one or so maybe the best one
will be in the future.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So Lensky also made a point of expressing gratitude, supposedly
told Trump thank you ten times during the meeting, which
again Trump really likes to hear. Now, in terms of outcomes,
we don't know much about what actually happened. Trump supposed
lead left for a forty minute phone call with Putin
in the middle of negotiations. Has said that the US
(02:31):
is going to provide potentially troops on the ground and
full security. However, you know, water has already been poured
on some of these hopes from the Russian side, and
I think there's a bit of kind of maybe misunderstanding
about what we should expect next between Ukraine and Russia,
especially in the US.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
In the middle Okay, and central to the negotiations that
are happening at the moment is this idea of land swapping.
So that's something that Trump signaled in the lead up
the talks that he had with Putin.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So tell me.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
About the Ukrainian territory that Russia currently occupies and what
we know about what Putin would like to see happen.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Sure, Russia currently occupies about twenty percent of Ukraine proper,
and that includes Crimea and roughly two thirds of four
eastern and southern oblasts Danietskukan, Zaparija, and Hrson, collectively known
as say the don Bus. Now, Putin not only wants
to cement that area of control and annexation that Russia
(03:32):
has claimed, but he's demanding full sovereignty almost as a
precondition for a ceasefire over the remaining twenty five percent
of danetsk Olblust. Now, this is area that Russia is
claiming but has not yet captured and is still in
ukraine hands, and Putin wants it transferred basically as soon
as possible, as a condition for stopping the fighting on
(03:53):
the ground.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Okay, and just in terms of that region, how important
is it to Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well, the part of the Dambast that Putin is targeting
is critical to protecting the rest of Ukraine. It's highly fortified,
it's very strategic. Conceding it would severely weaken Ukraine's defensive
posture and endanger the remaining front line. I think it's
foolish to think that Putin would want this specific territory
and then stop there. That kind of acquisition would give
(04:23):
him a lot of momentum and advantages to keep pushing
westward towards Kiev and potentially the rest of the country.
And I think it's obvious why Zielenski is so reluctant
to concede any territories, because without a firm commitment from
the West as a security guarantee, giving Putin more land
could embolden and even kind of incentivize further military action
(04:47):
throughout the rest of Ukraine. And that's just unthinkable from
the Ukrainian current position.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Well, let's talk a little bit about a potential security guarantee.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
We've got Trump saying that there will be one.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
But we will give them very good protection, very good security,
and that's part of it. And the people that are
waiting for us, they are I think they're very like minded.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
They want to what do we know about what might
happen there?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
We know very little in great detail about what that
guarantee would look like. Trump is vacillated even over the
weekend about whether or not US troops or US forces
would be involved in some way in public and probably
behind closed doors. He's telling different people different things, and
I'm not sure that the Trump administration has really come
to affirm conclusion about what they're prepared to deploy within Ukraine.
(05:34):
It's clear what Ukraine and the European allies want, which
is something like an Article five NATO asks guarantee that
a Russian would ever restart military operations that the West
and NATO specifically would come to Ukraine's defense. But I
think it's very premature to know what the Trump administration
is willing to do in Ukraine, and it conflicts with
(05:57):
a lot of Trump's campaign rhetoric that we as America
wouldn't be sending more troops to Ukraine. So I think
he might be in a difficult domestic position that could
conflict with some of the things he's been telling other leaders.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
And so how do you think that Zelenski and his
allies in Europe will be feeling after this meeting at
the White House.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I think they're going to sleep well tonight. There was
this fear that Trump could tell them something very much
that they didn't want to hear and revert back to
positions that are much more favorable to Russia's side. But
with Trump going forward, you just never know. A meeting
ends on a high note, and within twenty four hours
or forty eight hours, you get a new truth social
(06:38):
or a new statement from a Trump ally that completely
contradicts what he told the last person in the room
on the last day. At the end of the day,
Trump's interests come first, oftentimes and mostly above the US interests,
and definitely above Ukraine's. So there's so much power invested
in this one person, and he is inherently unpredictable.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Coming up why Trump's meeting with Putin last week was
a huge victory for Russia.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are in talks tonight to
try to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
The leaders arrived in Anchorage in Alaska a couple of
hours ago, greeting each other on a red carpet laid
out on a US Air Force base David.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
On Friday, Trump met with Putin in Alaska. Tell me
a bit about that meeting and what came.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Out of that. And first, the fact that the meaning
happened at all was already a victory for the Russians.
They got a red carpet on US soil, the first
Putin visit in a decade, without having to concede anything
or make any type of gift to the US side,
and order to make that happen. Yeah, and this is
a moment. It was a real moment.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And there you see President of the United States first
deeplaning Air Force one. You know, let's just take a
moment and listen to this moment.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
I also think the Russians realized early on that Trump
was so focused on breaking the diplomatic impasse that he
was very much unprepared for how negotiations would actually go.
There was sort of no planning, no pre agreements, no
real specific items. The plan was going to be built
mid flight, and the Russians correctly calculated that they could
give away nothing and come out ahead. I think that's
(08:24):
what we saw. That Trump administration was very surprised about
how intransigent he was during those talks, and he felt
like he got this high profile summit that restored Russia's
status as a great superpower. To quote some of the
Moscow newspapers, Trump was embarrassed and very much wanted to
change the subject as soon as possible onto the next
(08:47):
meeting with Zelensky, rather than dwell in the fact that
he had raised expectations that there could be a ceasefire
coming out of it.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were
many many points that we agreed on most of them,
I would say a couple of big ones that we
haven't quite got there, but we've made some headway. So
there's no deal until there's a deal, I will.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
But Putin left smiling and returned home triumphantly demonstrating that
Russia had broken through the diplomatic isolation of the last
four years.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, and there was so much talk about a ceasefire
going into those talks, Obviously there was no agreement made
for one. Now instead the language is around having some
sort of peace steal.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
But can you have a peace deal without a ceasefire?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I think it's unlikely, but not impossible. I think most
successful peace talks begin with the ceasefire and allow the
sides to breathe a little bit. These two sides are
bit at each other's throats since February twenty twenty two.
There's a lot of enmity between them, and I just
can't imagine that you could hash out peace while Russian
(09:57):
bombers are killing Ukrainian civili And.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
When we talk about strong and durable agreements, I mean,
to what extent do you think Zelenski can or should
trust anything that is being said about a security deal
at this point or is it just too unpredictable to.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Really be able to put faith into.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I think he's still correctly reticent, but things have evolved
considerably since that February encounter in the Oval Office. The
US is still providing the level of military aid that
had committed to under Biden, of course, with some caveats,
major ones. Republicans in Congress have hardened their stance towards Russia.
(10:40):
Since then, Trump's rhetoric has changed a lot, at least
the public rhetoric about what Putin is guilty of in
Ukraine and how he needs to stop. So with time,
I wouldn't put it out of the realm possibility that
the US could offer real security guarantees to Ukraine. Of course,
I think this is critical exchange for material compensation, which
(11:02):
tragically seems to drive every US foreign policy move these days.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And what would material compensation be.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I mean, I think it's clear that Trump administration wants
to sell weapons to Ukraine and have somebody else pay
for them. There's this obsession with cutting budget spending and
anything that's not a core Conservative or MAGA priority, and
this falls into that category. And I think they think
there is some political value in saying that we help Ukraine,
(11:29):
but we were paid to do so. I don't understand
that logic. It really contravenes centuries of American foreign policy,
but that seems very important to the Trump administration. So
as long as somebody else is footing the bill, even
for the troops themselves, not just the weaponry, I think
it's very possible that Trump would come around to that
(11:50):
and try to champion this as a victory because the
US was not just giving away things for free, right.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And Trump has been calling on Europe to spend more,
to do more for a while.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So has that happened. Is europe playing a stronger role.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Absolutely, But the Europeans were already doing a ton before
Trump said that, So he was I think very unfair
in the way that he described what the US had
done compared to what the Europeans had done. But it
is good that this is galvanizing a European coalition that
is committed to the long term economic, political, and military
development of Ukraine, and that is allied and is also
(12:28):
seemingly adept at working with Trump and salvaging the Transatlantic Alliance,
which again, six months ago, Trump was still talking about
leaving NATO an abandoning military bases, and there were all
these rumors that the US was pulling out of Europe.
We're not having those same conversations today. Meetings are happening
like they get on Monday in the White House with
this huge contingent, and Trump seems way more open to
(12:52):
cooperation with the Europeans as long as he seeses them
pulling their weight more than they have over the last
couple of decades.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Okay, and we've now heard that the next step in
all of this will be a meeting between Zelenski and Putin.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So what do you think we're likely to see out
of that.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I'm not a betting man, but I still wouldn't bet
on this, or I'd bet against.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
It, against the meeting happening, against.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The meeting happening. Now there are still people who are
participants in this meeting coming out and saying that Trump
got off the phone and Putin said that it's going
to happen the next two weeks. I think there's two
big reasons to be skeptical, And the first is that
the Russians have already come out and said they discussed
the idea of a meeting, rather than gave any type
(13:38):
of commitment to it, so they're walking back whatever Putin said.
The second is that we've had these translation issues between
Trump emissaries and Putin specifically, and I think it's possible
that something just got lost or misunderstood in the phone call,
that Putin never promised a concrete date or setting. So
(14:03):
and I'll believe it when I see it, but yeah,
you can hold me to that prediction.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
David, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Thank you for having me. H.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Also in the news today, Defense Minister Richard Moles says
the government is open to sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine
if a peace steal is agreed to with Russia. The
comments come after Shadow Finance Minister James Patterson said the
Coalition was open to contributing to a peacekeeping effort, a
shifting stance from formal Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who was
dismissive of Australian involvement. And Foreign Minister Penny Wong has
(14:53):
called the decision from Israel to revoke the visas of
Australia's diplomatic representatives to the Palestinian authority unjustified, saying well
undermine AID efforts. Israel says the call was in response
to both Australia's decision to recognize the Palestinian state, as
well as to cancel the visa of far right Israeli politicians.
Sim To Rothman, who was due to start a speaking
(15:13):
tour in Australia, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM
and tomorrow on the show A conversation with journalist Joe
Aston about the record ninety million dollar fine Quantus has
to pay and why despite the public relations disaster, the
airline still came out on top.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
See you that
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